Most liked posts in thread: DeltaWing Track Tests, etc

Steve · Oct 31, 2012

Ben Bowlby awarded in London (RaceTechMag.com)

By: William Kimberley
Date: Wednesday 31st October 2012

Ben Bowlby has been awarded the Royal Automobile Clubâ€™s prestigious Simms Medal for DeltaWing. It recognises his â€œvisionary workâ€ to motoring innovation that exemplifies the spirit of adventure. In the presentation to him at an awards lunch at the RACâ€™s HQ in Londonâ€™s Pall Mall by RAC Chairman Tom Purves, mention was made of recognising someone who has dared â€“ successfully â€“ to question some of the fundamentals of car design. Previous winners of the Simms Medal include Mike Hyde of Radical Motorsport and Simon Saunders for the development and manufacture of the Ariel Atom sportscar.

The recipient of the Dewar Trophy that recognises outstanding British technical achievement in the automotive industry was Ford for the design and development of its 1.0-litre 3-cylinder EcoBoost powertrain. In its citation, the design team was honoured by the technical committee for pushing the boundaries of technology that involved significant technical risk in combining so many novel elements in a new engine. The end result is an outstanding powertrain that combines the high torque and relaxed driving of a diesel with smooth, free-revving characteristics that has won acclaim from everyone who has driven it.

Previous winners of this trophy, that was first presented in 1906 include Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines in 2009 for its Formula One Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS), Keith Duckworth in 1969 for the Ford DFV Formula One engine, G A Vandervell in 1959 for the design, development, production and performance of the Vanwall car and Dennis Bros in 1906 for the 20hp Dennis Car.
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Dave.0 · Oct 31, 2012

That was very cool to see and hear how the front and rear suspension works and is set up.

I guess the next big thing will be rear big brake kits.

AnsonIvan · Nov 1, 2012

Came here to post the Chris Harris video, very cool stuff.

Steve · Nov 1, 2012

Automobile Magazine resurrects 8-year absent Racing Car of the Year award for DeltaWing.

2013 Racing Car of the Year: Ben Bowlby's Revolutionary DeltaWing

From our January, 2013 issue / By Preston Lerner

The Nissan DeltaWing is Automobile Magazine's slam-dunk Racing Car of the Year. In fact, we just as easily could have named it Racing Car of the Decade or even Racing Car of the Half Century. Not merely because the revolutionary, Batmobile-like design explodes conventional wisdom about how race cars are supposed to look and perform, but because the very existence of the DeltaWing forces us to question some seemingly self-evident truths about racing.

Designer Ben Bowlby's groundbreaking insight was realizing that two tiny front wheels positioned close together would turn just as well as two large wheels spaced far apart. This allowed him to fashion a car around an unconventional, needle-nosed shape that offers unparalleled aerodynamic efficiency. In June, during the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the DeltaWing defied critics who claimed that it would be a slug on the track. Although the black, Nissan-powered projectile was knocked out of the race by another driver's mistake, it ran long enough to deliver on Bowlby's promise that the car would run competitively with roughly half the power, half the weight, and half the fuel of its rivals. It was, in other words, an indisputably better mousetrap.

That said, better doesn't mean prettier. Even its advocates admit that the DeltaWing is challenged in the looks department. Then again, the car seems no more hideous to modern eyes than rear-engine cars did to fans of classically proportioned front-engine grand prix cars and Indy roadsters. These days, we're accustomed to Formula 1 cars bristling with gargantuan wings and complex aerodynamic appendages. But the success of the DeltaWing makes us wonder why we take such ungainly shapes -- incredibly sophisticated kludges, really -- for granted. .....
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That's just a snip, read more at: 2013 Racing Car of the Year: Ben Bowlby's Revolutionary DeltaWing - Automobile Magazine

Steve · Nov 10, 2012

Last in Beauty Contests May Be First on Tracks (nytimes.com)

By PRESTON LERNER | New York Times
Published: November 9, 2012
BRASELTON, Ga.

BELTED tightly within the slender carbon-fiber sheath of a black missile known as the DeltaWing, I hurtled over a brow on the Road Atlanta racecourse and knifed down to a 90-degree left-hander at nearly 170 miles an hour.

Despite plenty of racetrack experience, I had my doubts about what would happen next. Critics say that this radical racecar â€” a bizarre-looking creation that resembles the Batmobile â€” is more likely to fly than to turn. Five days earlier, in fact, it had done just that, flipping into a guardrail after being hit by another car during a prerace test session.

I hammered the brake pedal and clicked the left shift paddle three times to select second gear as my body strained against already taut shoulder harnesses. The carbon-carbon brakes bled off speed at an astonishing rate, and by the time I had to turn left, I was able to glide through the corner with no more drama than easing into a shopping-mall parking space.

This is not to suggest that Iâ€™m a hero racecar driver; quite the contrary, to be honest. Instead, my point is that while the DeltaWing looks more like a futuristic mobility pod than a contemporary racecar, it drives like, well, a regular automobile.

â€œIf I were blindfolded, I wouldnâ€™t know the difference between the DeltaWing and a normal car,â€ said Gunnar Jeannette, who had driven the hastily repaired machine to a respectable finish here a few days earlier in the 1,000-mile Petit Le Mans sports car race.

Curiously, the inside of the cockpit is just about the only vantage point from which the DeltaWing doesnâ€™t seem freakishly different. But its strange appearance from the outside, unlike any other car built for road racing, is an honest indicator of the unique technology it embodies.

The DeltaWing is arguably the most innovative â€” and probably the most polarizing â€” racecar to appear at least since rear-engine cars replaced traditional roadsters for Indianapolis 500 type events. By virtue of a design that minimizes aerodynamic drag and cuts weight to less than 1,300 pounds, it is able to go roughly as fast as cars that have twice as much horsepower and use twice as much fuel.

â€œThe DeltaWing is all about making history,â€ said Dan Gurney, the legendary Southern California driver who has won in many forms of motor sport. â€œItâ€™s going to have an enormous impact from the standpoint of efficiency, fuel economy, brake wear, tire wear, aerodynamics and power-to-weight ratio.â€

The avant-garde shape of the car â€” widely panned by both racing fans and participants as being hideous â€” and the threat it represents to existing designs has created a legion of detractors. But it has also generated an avid core of supporters who say they believe it holds the key to making motor sports relevant in a world increasingly aware of environmental matters, though that was not the main inspiration for the project.

â€œIâ€™m not a tree-hugger,â€ said Ben Bowlby, the iconoclastic designer of the DeltaWing. â€œIâ€™m a racer.

â€œThis is a disruptive technology,â€ he continued. â€œIt may force us to change the way we perceive racecars â€” and road cars.â€

Bowlby, 45, moved from England to Indianapolis in 2003 to work as the technical director of Chip Ganassiâ€™s IndyCar, Nascar and sports car empire.

In 2008, he had an epiphany: the two big front tires on Indy and Formula One cars produced loads of aerodynamic drag that slowed them down. What if he replaced them with two small front tires placed very close together? This would allow him to fashion needle-nose bodywork that minimized drag. Low drag meant that less power would be needed to reach the same speeds.

In 2010, Bowlbyâ€™s concept was entered in a competition to select a new chassis for the IndyCar series for 2012. The DeltaWing design was rejected because of concerns that the small front tires wouldnâ€™t allow the car to turn properly, while the wingless body might be prone to flying uncontrollably.

But officials of the Le Mans endurance race were seduced by Bowlbyâ€™s mantra: half the power, half the weight, half the fuel and all the speed. So they invited the car to enter a demonstration class showcasing green technology.

With the imprimatur of Le Mans, Bowlby was able to secure backing to build the car. Because the design was so radical, virtually every component had to be custom built. Michelin agreed to create the special tires. (The front tires, a mere four inches wide, look as if they belong on a vintage VW Beetle). Nissan signed on as the lead sponsor and provided a 1.6-liter 4-cylinder engine, which produces a paltry (by racing standards) 300 horsepower.

In seven months, the DeltaWing went from the drawing board to completion in the shop of Dan Gurneyâ€™s All American Racers. Three months later, it was racing at Le Mans, where it ran creditably before being knocked into a concrete barrier by another car. It then appeared last month at the Petit Le Mans race, finishing a remarkable 5th over all (running in an exhibition class), silencing cynics who said the car wouldnâ€™t perform as advertised.

The DeltaWing is eligible to compete next year in American Le Mans Series sports car races. The A.L.M.S. founder, Don Panoz, who is now the owner of the DeltaWing project, told me at Road Atlanta that he was developing closed-cockpit and road versions of the car.

In some ways, a road car would bring motor sports full circle. Racing began at the turn of the 20th century as a way to demonstrate the capabilities of early automobiles. But it didnâ€™t take long for cars to be developed specifically for competition.

In Europe, open-wheel thoroughbreds raced on road courses â€” a model that matured into the modern Formula One format â€” while in the United States they tended to compete on purpose-built tracks like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Sports cars based on road-going automobiles raced in their own events, most notably the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France.

For much of the 20th century, racing was the crucible in which new automobile technology was perfected before trickling down into the world of everyday road cars. Disc brakes, turbocharging, all-wheel drive and twin-cam engine architecture are just a few of the innovations pioneered by racecars that we now take for granted in our minivans and family sedans.

But by the 1980s and â€™90s, advances in aerodynamics and electronics had made racecars so fast â€” and so potentially dangerous â€” that the rules became ever more constraining in an effort to slow the cars. As a result, although hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually developing cars in Formula One, the technical apogee of the sport, racing no longer generates technology that translates into more sophisticated road cars.

â€œFormula One is wretched excess,â€ said Ricardo Divila, a former designer of Formula One cars and Le Mans prototypes who serves as an engineering consultant to Nissan. â€œFormula One has been gelded. You canâ€™t do anything interesting anymore but make minute, incremental improvements.â€

My brief stint behind the wheel convinced me that the DeltaWing was a textbook example of a better mousetrap. Still, its future remains unclear. Change is an unnerving proposition, and the conservative voices that dominate motor sports havenâ€™t embraced a vision that would require a fundamental rethinking of racecar design.

â€œThereâ€™s no question that the DeltaWing is stretching the boundaries,â€ said Darren Cox, Nissanâ€™s director of global motor sports. €œBut why should racecars look the way they do today? Weâ€™re not saying that the DeltaWing is the only answer. Weâ€™re saying that it raises questions.â€
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Nathan · Dec 11, 2012

Year of the Delta Wing, Nissan Video recap of 2012

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXTcxe_fCyg&feature=g-high-u]Year of the Nissan DeltaWing - YouTube[/ame]

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